F19 Nautilus seems to have silly flaws

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Sun Dec 8 04:50:10 UTC 2013


I rarely use Nautilus on F19.  I'm trying it now.  There are a few
improvements that seem obvious.

It calls itself "Files" (see "about files") but is nautilus (see ps(1)
output).  Make up your mind.  I think "files" is a terrible name -- it
is too generic.  "Gnome Files" might be OK.  But I like "Nautilus" (it
makes me think that I'm Captain Nemo).

SFTP capability is wonderful.  But it is hidden.  There should be some
hints in "Browse Network" or "Connect to Server" that SFTP is
supported.

There should be some GUI way of constructing the terse URI-like-object
for SFTP.  This is the syntax for it (from some random web page):
	sftp://[user[:password]@]example.org[:port]/[path/to/directory/]
Even that seems wrong: my experience suggests that the final
unconditional / is sometimes but not always optional.  One reason for
using Nautilus is to avoid powerful but arcane notations like this.

When I got an error "mounting" through SFTP the error was
asynchronous.
- the error report was generic (didn't pinpoint the problem)
- the error disappeared after I clicked OK so I couldn't study it
- could not see what I had typed.  It was gone
- I could not study what I had typed to figure out the error
- I could not edit what I had typed.  So I had to retype
  that intricate string

There is "open" and "open in new tab" but no "open in new window".
That seems dumb to me: I want two directories open so that I can see
and operate on them both at one time.

You can get the "open in new window" effect by "open in new tab" and
then dragging the tab off the window, but that seems needlessly
intricate and not obvious (except retrospectively).

I almost never want a directory displayed as per "view items as a grid
of icons".  Is there a way that I can make my choice of view ("view
items as a list") the default?  I waste so much time and motion
selecting this.

Often when I eject a USB flash memory device, I get a pop-up window
saying
	This location could not be displayed.
	?? could not be found.  Perhaps it has recently been deleted
			[OK]
I haven't taken the time to characterize when this happens.  But it
seems quite sloppy.  It leaves the user (me) a bit disturbed.


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